I feel old

My BABY SISTER is ENGAGED.

I have to go back to work tomorrow morning. Such a drag.

Out with the guys

Wednesday night, after going to the Earthworks and then to dinner, a group of the engineers went to a bar in Granville called Brews. I thought it was very interesting to go there and see the local wildlife. It was a total dive! As far as I could tell, the primary motivation for going there was to experience some beer named Arrogant Bastard (no, really, that is its name).

Our manager, Andy, stood us up for dinner, and we discovered that he'd just gone straight to the bar. He was pretty toasted when we caught up with him there. Charming. He leered at Jaime and made off-color jokes about his own lack of endowment. Should make staff meetings more engrossing from now on.


Deb and Jaime pose together. Why? Because we're pretty rocket scientists! We have to admit, though, that neither of us are very good at flirting. *sigh*


David Vickers, a key member of the top-ranked bar trivia team STEELR (Buffalo Wild Wings in Heath on Tuesday night). Deb, David, and Brian ruled the trivia world!


Mark Tinawi: Mr. Gap Inc, and everyone's favorite interim supportability guy. He's the source of a good story: For some reason, on Wednesday afternoon, Mark threw a crumpled piece of paper at me. I responded by throwing a crumpled napkin at him. Since I can't throw worth anything, I missed him, so I threw another wadded-up napkin, but missed him and hit Henry instead. They laughed at me and threw them back at me. I took one of the napkins, wetted it with my water bottle, and threw it at an opportune moment-- I hit him square on the neck with the world's largest spitwad. Heheh. He said it hurt, though. Sorry, Mark! Anyway, then, to my amusement and horror (equal servings of both), I saw that Bob Lusitano (Northrop Grumman program manager) was staring at us. In between snickering and gasping, I berated the Mark and Henry: "Guys, quit fooling around! This is serious business!" *snort snort* Lusitano kept looking at me for the rest of the afternoon.
I swear, I sometimes act like a giggly teenager, but I am a doggone good analyst!

I intimated that my briefing did not go well. Overall, it was actually pretty good. The beginning and ending were kind of weak, but the middle part (the stuff with the data and the technical interchanging) was fine. The worst part was when the customer rep asked me some questions, and I dithered a bit, because it took me a few minutes to figure out what he really wanted to know, versus what he actually asked (which were not the same thing). Cheryl jumped in with some good info, but I had lost my momentum, and the customer guy wouldn't look or talk in my direction (and I was in the front, at the podium) for the rest of the time. It doesn't help that the customer rep looks and acts like a bug that just crawled out from the darkness under a rock. Seriously, he totally does: He hunches over and glances around from side to side, tilting his head up to squint at you, as you mutter about schedule or brilliantly explain your spectral analysis... Makes me laugh.

Ancient Wonders!!!!!

I'm back from beautiful Ohio.

How can I possibly summarize my adventures? It was a business trip, and as far as business goes, it sucked, but as a trip, it was okay.

I saw my fifteenth wonder of the ancient world: the Great Earthworks of Newark, Ohio. So I was very happy that I went.



This map was pretty much useless.











It's large enough that it is very difficult to get a good pictures of anything but a tree or a minor mound:
Within the Great Circle














View of the earthen wall of the Great Circle













I hiked all around and over the Great Circle (c. 30 acres in area) in my cute high heeled brown shoes from the San Diego outlet. I don't recommend it. My feet hurt for the rest of the evening.















I went to the Earthworks park with Ramon:

He's a gyro engineer.

Why, oh why, oh why-o!

Why did I ever go to Ohio?
I know why. Technical Interchange Meetings.

Bleh. This has been a travesty, so far.

The bright side is the fact that the admirable Kevin White lent me Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which I read in its entirety yesterday. It was quite good. Rowling's writing really is getting better and better. I thought it was slow at first. Some thoughts:
-I guessed the identity of the Half-Blood Prince before the book was even published; in fact, when Rowling first announced the title of her up-coming volume. How? Why? I don't know. I just noted that Rowling hinted that it was an already established character, so I just went through the list of possible candidates whose origins were still murky, and came to a conclusion. My guess was confirmed by things throughout the book.
-I figured out by the middle of the book which major character would leave the story.
-I think there's more to the ending, and the perpetrators thereof, than one would initially believe.

Tonight, a lot of people from our group went to a bar. We played a trivia game. Fun.

Okay, well, tomorrow is my big presentation. Exciting.

It is now after midnight, eastern time. *yawn* TTFN

And also...

I spent a few hours with Wendy Neal last night. It was so good to chat for a little while. I saw Connor, too. He is such a happy little guy! Wendy is a stay-at-home mom. I'm jealous. *sigh* Anyway, we went to Starbucks and then up to my apartment. Connor loved the cats! He shrieked and giggled and chased them. The cats were a little less enthusiastic about Connor, and spent the whole time slinking around and hiding. Heehee! Connor also got very excited about the X-Box game controller. I'm sure he'll be playing Halo in no time.

Okay, so this is the only picture of Wendy and me that I can find right now. We're with Crissi Clayton, at Temple Square, 2001.

know thyself

My comments on geekiness were prompted by thoughts I had over the weekend. Among other things, I jokingly remarked that I liked hanging out with my older brother and his friends, because they make me comparatively less nerdy and socially pathetic than usual. They talk about comic books, Warhammer miniatures, and video games. You know. They are real RPG-playing, anime-watching, convention-attending geeks.

Then I started thinking. Am I in denial? I suspect that most "normal" people (whoever they are; please tell me if you can positively identify them) would see little difference between me and Dan's homies. I have all of the marks of geekiness except extreme computer expertise and Star Trek fanhood, and I sort of acquired those through marriage. I started examining my regular activities and interests.

I like hanging out by myself with just my cats and maybe my husband (when he's not elsewhere, playing Halo or being a computer or photography nerd).
I like getting good grades.
I like watching Buffy and Sci Fi Friday television, and then spending hours browsing the Internet or reading ancient literature.
I like reading science journals.
I like obsessing about obscure topics and researching them.
I like being considered an expert on a wide variety of topics.
I like being able to explain and even diagram the relationships among the various linguistic descendants of Proto-Indoeuropean.
I like my t-shirts with the periodic table or liver flukes on them.

Oh, well.

*.*

Well, I'm scarfing down some spinach and leftover pasta in my office at work.
Food. It's a good thing.

Lots of interesting things have been going on in the world:

Indonesia reaches a peace agreement with Aceh

This happened a few days ago, in Helsinki (Gosh, there's a city with a low media profile. I mean, can you think of anything else that has happened in Helsinki recently? When planning vacations, does anyone ever say, "I've heard Helsinki has great beaches and a happenin' night life"? Just the name makes you want to create a joke with a bad pun as the punchline.). Aceh doesn't have independence or even autonomy, but TNI is withdrawing from the area and the Acehnese will get more and better representation. Whatever. I'm waiting to see how long it takes before gun-toting "pro-Indonesia factions" start terrorizing the countryside...

Mr. Scott Beams Up to the Big Transporter Room in the Sky
I'm not a Trekkie, but I am enough of a geek to care. I always found him to be one of the most agreeable characters from the original Star Trek crew. And I didn't know until today that Doohan was a war veteran who served at Normandy on D-Day. So, give him some respect!

Speaking of being a geek, here's an informal reader poll.
Do you consider yourself to be a geek?
Do other people consider you to be a geek?
Does it bother you? (either way)
Would you choose to be geekier?

No, really. What IS there to say?

I'm just be-bopping along through my life right now. Everything has gone a little crazy, so anything other than a be-bop would be difficult to maintain.

Jeff alluded, in his blog, to the fact that our plans for moving the the Central Valley have changed somewhat. Rather than keeping our original end-of-December target, it looks as we will be moving to Visalia at the end of September. Obviously, this raises our stress level several notches, since we have many things to do, not the least of which is the finding of employment. I had counted on having several more months to spend with friends and family, and now it turns out that I don't have much time at all.

At work, things are the same as ever. This week's indignity: One of our conference rooms has actually disappeared. No joke. Yesterday, there was a conference room in the southeastern corner of the building. Today, the table and chairs have been removed, desks and file cabinets have been emplaced, and the conference room is now an office. Nobody in facilities informed anybody in our department of this change. The Outlook Calendar still officially lists me as having a meeting (I'm the Anaheim chair of the meeting) in that conference room tomorrow. What the heck?!?!?!?! Whatever. I only have two more months of this crap. Of course, I'll miss my job when I go, and eventually it will become the setting of much nostalgic rambling, but right now, I am just so done with all of it. How can they expect me to provide decent and productive work when (1) my computer is not up to standards-- officially, it's supposed to be replaced, but the IT folks don't return my pages, (2) my office is so cold I sometimes have to wear gloves, (3) facilities change without notice, (4) the customer keeps slashing budgets but expecting us to still provide them with quality analysis without being given adequate raw data or other material to work with, (5) etc. etc. etc...?

I still have lots to do at home. I planned to clean and write some letters last night, but we ended up spending the evening with the Winters-- an enjoyable pursuit, but not efficacious for house cleanliness. We did play Haunted Mansion Clue, though. There are hidden Mickeys all over the game board. =) Or rather, :o
P.S. Has anyone ever noticed that Mickey does not actually look anything like a mouse?

Jeff and I are getting by with just one car, since the Accord is still in the shop. I'm taking the bus to and from work. Not too bad, but it makes it difficult to run any errands on the way home at the end of a day.

Christina is coming over tonight. It will be good to see her.

New week

There's nothing really remarkable about this week, other than the fact that Sci Fi Friday starts up again on, well, Friday.

We got back from Phoenix on Saturday night-- we had to sit in the plane for two hours on the tarmac before we even left Phoenix, and so we were tired and cranky by the time we finally got home. We took it easy on Sunday, and Mia and Tim and Dan came over. Monday, I don't remember what I did, but it wasn't very exciting. Oh, that's right, I did laundry and cleaned the kitchen. Today, I went to work (of course), and then came home, did a bit of housework, Mia and Jeff came home (Mia is staying with us for a few days, as Mom and Dad are in OR), had dinner, did some exercise, and now we're watching Buffy (of course).

Oh, the excitement.

PHX

Yes, we are in lovely Phoenix, AZ. We are visiting the Wrights. We are trying to get in touch with Roland, so we can get together, but so far have been unsuccessful.

Arizona is a chilly and dark place. Sound strange? Well, outside, it is hot and bright. People compensate by making the insides of buildings freaking cold and dim. But some, as they say, like it hot, and I am one of them. =(

The Wrights have a dog. It is named Lewis. It barks a lot. I miss my kitty cats.

Vacation 2

I wrote a longish post, but it got dumped.

We're still on vacation.

Monday: Went to Hollywood Bowl for Disneyland 50th anniversary concert. It was better than it sounds. Jeff got great seats and took me as a surprise. The concert included appearances by Mickey and Minnie, Donald Duck, composer Richard Sherman, some of the Electrical Light Parade floats, and Fess Parker (played Davey Crockett, which was-- I found out-- Jeff's favorite TV show when he was a child).

Tuesday morning, we went to LAX to meet Mia and her team as they returned from PNG. It was great to have her back, and she has plenty of exciting things to share.
Tuesday evening, we saw the King Tut exhibit at LACMA. It was fairly good, although it was over-crowded, and both Jeff and I were disappointed that they didn't have Tut's mummy and sarcophagus on display.

Vacation

Jeff and I are well and truly on vacation. Technically, we started on Friday, but I had some work to do and we were getting some other stuff done around town, so we left on Saturday afternoon. Funny story, though. I went to drop my stuff off at work, and there were lots of people there. Hmmm, some people can't figure how to take a holiday. I walked into B's office and said, "Will you please get a life?" while he said "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!" because apparently I frightened him.

Well, anyway, Jeff and I are at an undisclosed location, far away from it all and avoiding responsibility. We went to a few museums yesterday, and have spent a lot of time vegging. We've watched four DVDs of Buffy Season 4 so far. As per usual, Riley annoys me. How could Buffy stand him? The plot involves him being given drugs to enhance his mental and physical abilities, which leads me to wonder, how dim would he have been without them?!? Excepting a few highlights (including the episode "Hush," which has the distinction of being the only episode of Buffy or Angel that has ever actually frightened me), I find Season 4 to be the low point of the series (although Jeff is happy as long as Anya is part of the action).

Back to regularly scheduled, non-Buffy programming: Today is 4 July, which is the date that the United States of America celebrate their national holiday. As my dad once said, it was very clever of those colonials to time the signing of the Declaration of Independence to coincide with a holiday.

Not sure what we're going to do today, but we're being very lazy about it. Mmmmm.

Touchy photo

Blogger lets you upload pictures! So, this is my cutey-pie, Touchy. And then, me with Touchy.

The only way to work

Well, today is the first day of our vacation. We are doing stuff around here before going out of town. I had some work to finish up yesterday, so I brought it home. I'm working on it now, and I'll just run by the office and drop it off some time after lunch. Jeff is still asleep (!) so I am comfortably ensconced on the floor in the living room, with food and tea next to me, TWO laptops, and a remote and a kitty cat handy. It is warm, not cold, in my apartment. I am about to become very productive. I should totally work this way every day.
The only drawback is the fact that Touchy has developed a fascination for my cup of milk. He kept trying to lap it when it was full, and then I caught him with his head stuffed inside the cup, licking the little bit left in the bottom when I had finished drinking it. Now he is chewing on a roll of masking tape that got left on the floor.

And now, a special treat for you readers. Below is a message from Touchy. He typed it by walking and perching on my keyboard:
vf -+............................................................. imnjP0-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA?>">>>>>>>>> as./